ACTIVITY 5: HANDOUT
1
HUNGER AND POVERTY STATEMENTS

1. The human right to an
adequate diet is not legally recognized in the United States.

2. 40,000 children in
the world die of causes related to hunger and poverty every day.

3. Approximately 25% of
the homeless in the USA are children.

4. Over half of all families
living in poverty in the United States are maintained by women only.

5. Unemployment rates
for Native, African, and Latino/a Americans are considerably higher
than those for most other US citizens.

6. Average weekly earnings
for Native, African, and Latino/a Americans are considerably lower
than those for most other US citizens.

7. The Food Stamp program
serves more than 25 million people in the United States.

8. One in six elderly
citizens in the USA is either hungry or has an inadequate diet.

9. One in four children
comes to school undernourished in the United States.

10. More than 3/4 of the
world’s starving people are women and their dependent children.

11. During the past two
decades at least, the gap between the rich and the poor in the United
States has grown wider.

12. School Breakfast Programs
serve 7 million children daily while School Lunch Programs serve over
26 million each day in the United States.

13. Prices in supermarkets
are generally higher in low income than in middle income neighborhoods.

14. There is enough food
in the world to feed everyone, but there are still millions who are
hungry.

15. There was a potato
famine in Ireland in the middle of the 19th century that caused several
million Irish to emigrate to the United States.

16. During the Depression
in the 1930s in the USA, there was a “dust bowl” in the midwest and
most crops could not be grown for several years.

Sources:
US Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract
of the United States (yearly); World Bank, World Development Report,
NY: Oxford University Press, (yearly); UNICEF, The State of the World’s
Children (yearly); Bread for the World (1998); US Hunger and Poverty
Report, 1100 Wayne Avenue, Suite 1000, Silver Spring, MD, 20910;
The New Internationalist, No 310 (March 1999).